Google considers dropping HTTP requirement in Chrome for URLs

OSNews is reporting that Google recently made a change to the developer’s version of Chrome, their desktop browser, that many developers aren’t on board with due to reported bugs. Google has decided to omit the “http://” you see at the beginning of a URL in the address bar in an attempt to make browsing easier for users. These developer versions are a view through the looking glass which allows users to see some features which may make it into the next update of the browser.

Unfortunately, in a bid to make things easier complex issues have to be considered such as adding the “http://” back in if the URL is copied from Chrome’s address bar. That’s because some applications require the “http://” in order for a link to work. The “http://” scheme is suppose to be added back to URLs when they are copied to a computer’s clipboard, but developers are finding that not every clipboard implementation is compatible with the workaround.

Personally, I’m personally happy with Chrome keeping the “http://” prefix. At this point people are use to it so I don’t think it’s worth the hassle of stripping it out and doing a bunch of funky things in the background to make sure it’s added back in when someone copies the URL from the address bar. I would lean more toward Google leading a standardization of using visual icons to represent the various prefixes as suggested by Thom, the OS News writer of the original article. Once there is agreement it could then be dropped and visual icons, like the standard RSS icon, could then be used.

Speak Your Mind

Russell

wow thats weird… http is like… just supposed to be there

go

How are we going to connect to ftp sites ?

http://bhphp.com/ brandon

that’s so dumb. if i go to an intranet site like http://proxy/ by typing in proxy, google performs a search because of it’s omni bar, and asks me “Did you mean http://proxy/?” now i’m curious how that process will work if they strip the http…